Author: Matthew Vincett

Round 2 of playtest for the Highbinders Crewsheet – Conniving Political Crooks.

Following their success in breaking up the connections between The Lost and the Anti-Ministry activists, the group was assigned to put an end to the Ministry once and for all. However, Lady Slane wanted them to take care of it more quietly this time, and so a goal to blackmail them was set.

After downtime – in which the Hound began to look for a silencer schematic, Jonathan (the Leech) begin to work on Painkillers, and Albrozad indulged his vice by going to see a mock-recreation of his diety – the Golden Stag – defeating the demon Tyraxis

Everyone set out to look for useful information to blackmail the group with, Viper (the Hound) managed to track one of the head boss’ (Constantin Hammette) wife to a jewelry shop in Silkshore, where she was purchasing things far above what she should have. Viper and DeEnvy (the Cutter) then went to talk with the wife, and passed a message to her to tell her husband: they wanted to speak with him.

Francine (the Squint), meanwhile, went to the Charterhall University library with Albrozad (the Slide) to research the financial status of the group, and found that there were large amounts of money not accounted for in the final billings. During this time she was noticed by a member of the activist group who worked in the library, failed to seduce her way out of it (getting a broken nose for her attempt), and then assisted her hull Assistant, Valentine, in kidnapping the man – he critted the roll, so that was a thing.

Cue interrogation, in which the Crew convinced the library worker to set up a meeting with Hammette, alone, at their HQ – a small shack along the Charterwall. The guards outside initially try to stop them, asking them why they’re here, and it almost looks like a fight is going to break out, but then Albrozad has an idea, and tells them “we’re here for the meeting.” Realizing who it was they’re were they let them in – save Deenvy who remains outside.

They manage to convince Hammette to send off his personal guards so they can talk in private, and then proceed to dump all of the knowledge they have to convince him to stop working against the Ministry, but also to start working for them. His group will begin to pay up to them, and as long as they do they’re free to continue any activities they want – save those against the Ministry. Meanwhile, outside Deenvy tries to intimidate the guards off, but fails and traumas for his trouble.

They rolled the Demonic Notice entanglement afterwards, so next session is going to be fun – sadly two folks won’t be there, so I’m anticipating a lot less – or maybe more – to happen.

So last Sunday marked the start of playtesting for my Highbinders Crewsheet – Conniving Political Crooks. The crew is as followed:

Johnathan “Needle” Winters – A Akorosi Leech

Ryder “Viper” Irey – An Akorosi Hound with a pet snake

Mr. DeEnvy – A Tycherosi Cutter

Pejman Albrozad – An Iruvian Slide

Dr. Francinestein – An Dagger Islander Squint with a medium-sized Hull companion.

They chose Lady Slane of the Ministry of Preservation as their Sponsor, and gave her the Sly and Aloof qualities – they serve as an “unaffiliated” interest group for her and the Ministry; picked Mariana Sel, a magistrate as their contact; and chose Career Criminal (the stat booster for the Highbinders) as their starting ability, with Workshop and Highbinders Rigging as their starting upgrades.

To start them off I gave them a task from Lady Slane – there is a small interest group that started up with the intention of swaying the City Council into tightening restrictions on Ministry operations in Duskwall – particularly in the Barrowcleft and Dunslough. The Hound identified two members of the party and managed to track one to a secret meeting in Coalridge, where he observed money trading hands from The Lost, showing who’s payroll these people were on.

The Crew decided to crash the party, and Francine and Jonathan set up a trap in the factory where they were meeting that would electrocute to-death their enemies if need be. DeEnvy helped them avoid the consequence of being noticed by the factory boss. They settled on a Power-play Score and went in to crash the money exchange.

With Viper on a rooftop ready to snipe, and shooting between the legs of their targets at least once, and Francine’s Hull Valentine and DeEnvy providing physical intimidation, the rest of the Crew broke in on the meeting and had no real difficulty terrifying The Lost out of the equation permanently – they left without any real hassle, with Pejman Swaying them to leave behind one of the cases of money on their way out. Their contact in the interest group was also sent on his way, defeated, and unlikely to continue this activism. After collecting the briefcase the Crew was approached by factory security. They claimed to be inspectors, complained about the sorry state of the electrical safety – to prove their point, Francine electrocuted one of the guards to death with the trap they had set up. Convinced, the surviving guards left them be.

Lady Slane was pleased to hear that they put a damper on this group and paid them for their service.

Downtime went forth after that, with a moment of note being Albrozad working to establish his own little monopoly to give him additional Coin during downtime, and Francine putting on a scuba mask and crawling into a dark aquarium tank to sleep with a mysterious “Dave”.

The verdict at the end was that this hadn’t felt all that different from being hired as Bravos to do something. I’m inclined to agree, and while I don’t want to completely exclude a violent answer from the Highbinders (think brownshirt-style political terrorism) I intend to push the Crew in a direction closer to blackmail, embezzlement, or mudslinging next time.

Played my first game of Vigilantes with a former-Shadows crew. Heres how it went:

A little bit of discussion led to the last-minute creation of a custom faction called the Grenmald – a radical group that split off from the Grinders, Skovs that are all HEAVILY mutated, more than most Grinders – and the decision that instead of the Grinders The Opposition would go up against them as their -2 Faction (for taking docks they wanted). With their group sharing a border with them, The Opposition decided that it would be best to attack and deal a severe blow to them.

So the former noble of the group barreled ahead and attempted to climb down the chimney of a warehouse administration office the Grenmald owned – only to get stuck – followed by the former reporter – who also got stuck – and then both of them fell into the office. They met their first two Grenmald there, killed one, the other managed to shout for help. They killed her, but 8 others slowly made their way. A brutal fight later, one our unfortunate former-noble (the Cutter) was nearly Stressed out. The Spider of the group (another noble background) manages to find a safe and tells the Lurk (former journalist) about it. She proceeds to work on it while the other two go about looking through the now-mostly-empty warehouse looking for and destroying whatever drugs and whatnot the Grenmald was financing their opperation with.

Meanwhile, the Lurk has a bit of trouble with the lock, and decides to just Wreck the lock open with a point-blank shot. She has no points in Wreck, so I offer the Devil’s Bargain “the Grenmald’s leader shows up,” she takes it. However, things go poorly – see, she’d taken a lot of stress as well, and when a partial success prompts her to try and resist Level 1 harm she rolls…. JUST low enough to give her a Trauma. So she passes out in the office, while in the warehouse below a collasal figure completely obscured by robes walks in. The Spider and Cutter hide and plot to attack him.

The Cutter takes out one of the guards, but the Grenmald’s leader – Boris the Animal – is made aware of their pressence. The Spider jumps on him, tries to put him out with slumber essence, but he’s just a little too big to get taken down by it all at once and so tosses him off. The other guard is dealt with fast enough by the Cutter. However, this is where things get interesting, because EVERY member of the crew is Akorosi, and Boris’ got a BIT of a grudge against Akorosi for… well, Lockport in general. So he gets into the fight…

Takes off his concealing robes…

He’s this thing: http://wh40kart.im/_images/48aa3ea45dae5bdd580507d6649dcf29.jpg

And he’s A LOT stronger than either of them, plus the poor Spider keeps rolling 1s on his Hunt. In the end the Cutter pops his rage vial in order to kill him. Boris’ last words are “Skovland…” before his passes. The Cutter, now still VERY much enraged and POSSIBLY going to attack the Spider… knocks himself out to prevent that from happening. So the Spider, now the only one left concious, drags his two friends out of the door of the warehouse. There’s one last guard, who sees Boris’ body; the Spider tries to use this to convince him to back off, because this guard is nowhere near as tough as Boris was… and he rolls terribly. A gunshot and VERY poor Resist roll later, and in a trauma’d panic the Spider drops his friends and runs away, leaving them at the mercy of the Grenmald.

But, my friends, this was only in the FIRST HALF of the session.

Three days later, Cutter and Lurk wake up in a makeshift prison, chain to the walls. Another Grenmald, a mid-tier leader named Brill, gives them an ultimatium: work for the Grenmald he’ll let them live, or don’t and he’ll kill them. The Cutter tries – and fails – to Wreck his way out of the manacles that chain him to the wall, but does succeed in getting Brill close enough to headbutt him unconcious. A foot-fishing for the keys later, they get their equipment back, kill the unconcious Brill, and just BARELY managed to sneak their way out of the Grenwald tavern – the HQ of the mutant Skovs.

So, in summary: in the first session every member of the the crew trauma’d, but they took on a gang a good but tougher than them (Tier 1, but fictionally more powerful and threatening), killed its boss and a subordinate (both were two of the named examples for the gang) which throws their leadership into dissarray (currently have clocks racing as to whether or not they get a new leader or rejoin the Grinders) and rolled SO many Desparate rolls that the Cutter got two advances with only having to throw in 2 XP from session XP.

So in conclusion: this is going to be fun.

http://wh40kart.im/_images/48aa3ea45dae5bdd580507d6649dcf29.jpg

So, here’s a funny story:

On the very first engagement roll my group had they rolled a crit. It was hilarious because it’s the one thing I hadn’t expected to happen – had to bullshit up another obstacle so that the engagement wasn’t just the end of it (also my first time GMing the game). After about a month we had to take a break due to scheduling changes, though.

We started up again just this past Tuesday – some of the old group couldn’t make it back, but we still had enough originals to where I felt it was fair to continue the old campaign instead of starting a new one (to let the new players have their own say in it). So we go over the basic rules, what happened in the 1 year between the seasons, then they go to make their first engagement roll of Season 2….

It was another crit.

And by the new guy no less – who made a grand total of 2 action rolls (including the engagement) in the whole of the session, and had BOTH be crits. It was surreal, and I fear that if that pattern continues I’ll never be able to challenge them ever again.

Episode 5 (I’ve been told it was) of The Chimera

GM: Luke

Alaka’i – Cutter – Chris

Amaliese Jenette – Cutter – Matthew

“Ask” – Cutter – Oskar

Emeline – Slide – Thomas

Following a disasterous attempt to taking the Horde head-on that nearly resulted in the death of all of our daring scoundrels, the Gondoliers found a wounded and 3-trauma’d Faus on the streets and took him in to help him recover. Faus had saved a young Gondolier by the name of Philipe from being assaulted, and in return Philipe’s mother, Ebbe, has offered her services as a healer to the Chimera as well as tending to the Severosi elder’s wounds.

Later that same day as Ask and Alaka’I lick their wounds, a new woman walks into their lair and introduces herself as Amaliese Jenette. An orphan from the streets of Duskwall, she had heard about The Chimera through the underworld grapevine, and offered her skills as a killer and guide to the city to the mercenary company. With their original guide, Emeline, having been unable to join them for a few weeks, Alaka’I allows her to join. A wry smile in response to a question of if she’ll follow The Chimera’s laws makes him nervous, but he is certain it is just youthful eagerness.

Amaliese presents a plan to the group: target the Scions of the Fallen, a gang of the young sirs and madams of the one-great-now-fallen old nobles of Six Towers. They recently had joined up with a strange organization called the Cult of the Hanged Man, wearing seemingly-silver necklaces inscribed with an ibis – a weird variation of which had recently come to infest the city – and so likely have much worth stealing wherever it is they are meeting. Having identified the church of the Hanged Man, the group prepares to assault it.

Before they do this, Ask decides to visit the church himself, and is aided by the Gondoliers, who draw a distraction to give him time to Attune to the place. Here he is noticed by a familiar presence: the god that reached out to him in Mistshore Park, the god that commanded the Hollows against them during the Chimera’s assault against them, the god that is devouring Ask’s own: Gesalt, or as it goes by now: The Hanged Man. Ask reports back, but the Chimera carries on with the assault regardless.

With luck and skill favoring them, they get into position with effective ease. Alaka’I takes a shot at a dangerous-looking gatekeeper from the front to cause a distraction, wounding but not killing him, while Ask, Amaliese, and their thugs assault the church from the back. Ask manages to pin a labor director to hold off the fighting, though he is wounded in the process, and Amaliese steps in afterwards, commanding all of the hired dockers to surrender. One responds by firing a crossbow bolt into Amaliese’s shoulder, which embeds itself in her armor. “I tried to warn you,” she says as she splits the man’s skull with her pistol.

Ask attempts to command the director to tell them where they’re holding all of their wealth. The director is unintimidated, and in a resulting brawl Ask kills him. A fight nearly breaks out once more, and the situation becomes desperate as The Hanged Man begins to becoming involved, but before much more bloodshed can happen, and avoiding irritating the Hollows being used to pull carriages of loot, the dockers are culled into submission, with Amaliese promising they won’t come to any harm under her “care”.

Back up front the spirit wardens have arrived and attempt to discern what happened by peering into the echos of the ghost field. Alaka’I puts one of them down before he can be spotted, and successfully avoids being drawn into situation against his will. He has a sandwhich and waits for more Spirit Wardens to arrive – he wants to talk with them when this is all said and done.

Back around back, Ask and Amaliese discover four of the six carriages are filled with treasure, the other two are empty. Ask secretly wants to take the two empty carriages to fill with their prisoners, which will become sacrifices to his god. Managing to Study him enough to get a sense of his motivations, Amaliese pushes back against these desires, eventually calling out a pair of thugs she had hired and armed with the Chimera’s weapons behind the backs of the others to act as muscle to back her up. They’ll be taking the four carriages filled with sellable goods. With the new muscle, though, Ask points out that they could take all six carriages.

“… Got as much brains on you as muscle, I see,” Amaliese says, slapping Ask on the shoulder. Ask and the two Chimera-loyal thugs (Barbosa and Rile) take three of the carriages and the prisoners. Amaliese stays behind for a while longer, using yellow paint she had requested the thugs bring her to graffiti the back of the church with the silhouette of a slithering snake. She and her hired goons take the remaining carriages back to The Chimera’s lair.

After the Spirit Wardens arrive and kill the wounded gatekeeper to save on paperwork (two dead instead one of dead, one wounded), Alaka’I manages to find one off on his own and confronts him. “Why aren’t you doing your job?” he glares as the warden with accusatory eyes, “there’s an army of hollows running amok in the northern half of the district. You’re supposed to be protecting people from them. Deal with it.” The Warden, though not happy with Alaka’I’s impudence, says he’ll look into it.